Julia Kelliher Publishes Her Work On STREAMS Guidelines In Nature Microbiology

Julia Kelliher Publishes Her Work On STREAMS Guidelines In Nature Microbiology

New Mexico Consortium scientist Julia Kelliher has published a new paper titled STREAMS guidelines: standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies in Nature Microbiology.

This work introducing the STREAMS guidelines which is short for “standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies.”

Microbiome research looks at the communities of microbes that live in places like soil, water, animals, and humans. Because these studies often combine many different kinds of data and involve teams from multiple fields, it can be hard for researchers to describe their work in a clear, consistent way. That makes it tougher for others to compare results, repeat experiments, or build on what’s already been done.

To help solve this, scientists previously created the STORMS guidelines, a reporting checklist for human microbiome studies. STREAMS builds on that foundation and expands it to cover a much wider range of microbiome research. This includes environmental studies (like terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric, or engineered systems), synthetic communities, and microbiomes associated with non-human hosts. The new checklist includes 67 reporting items designed to make studies easier to understand, review, and reuse.

The STREAMS guidelines were developed with input from 248 researchers across 28 countries. The paper includes detailed explanations, side-by-side comparisons with STORMS, and real examples showing how to use the checklist in practice. Like STORMS, STREAMS will remain a living resource, updated over time by the research community as methods and needs evolve.

To learn more read the entire paper at: STREAMS guidelines: standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies.